Name release requested
PARIS (UPI)—Discarding his customary prepared speech for the second straight week, U.S. Ambassador Philip C. Habib today urged the Communists at the Vietnam peace talks to release the names of American prisoners.
Bill calls for end to drilling operations
WASHINGTON (UPI)—A bill calling for an end to oil drilling operations in the Santa Barbara Channel and for a federal takeover of Union Oil Company's drilling platform was introduced Thursday by Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, D-Maine.
Muskie, chairman of the Senate Air and Water Pollution subcommittee, said the bill would prohibit new exploration or drilling beyond the three-mile limit in the channel.
"One of the most pressing aspects of the problem of men missing in action is that families on both sides are anxious to know whether their men are alive or not," Habib said.
Muskie made no estimate of how much the federal government might have to pay for taking over existing mineral leases off California but noted that a top justice department official had recently suggested such action might be a "non-compensable exercise of the police powers of the sovereign."
Citing a recommendation by a special presidential study panel
HUTCHINSON (UPI)—A flaw in a ring described as the symbol of a bride's "most recent and cherished engagement" brought a court suit in which James and Wenda Eisenhour of St. John, Kan., asked $21,428, including $20,000 in punitive damages.
Ring flaw causes suit
The suit filed Wednesday in Reno County District Court said the ring was purchased Feb. 15, 1969, in Hutchinson for slightly less than $1,000, with the understanding that it was worth $1,500. Later, the complainants said, they discovered the ring was "practically worthless" because of an internal fracture.
Actually, they said, the ring's value was $150.
In a suit naming a former Hutchinson jewelry store and a Los Angeles diamond importer who reportedly guaranteed the ring, Eisenhour, now serving in Vietnam, asked $15,000 in punitive damages for his humiliation. His wife asked $5,000 in punitive damages, partly because the jeweler kept the ring for two months after she complained of its quality and during that time she was "without any symbol of her most recent and cherished engagement."
Conservation forces win key House vote
WASHINGTON (UPI) — The House voted Thursday to kill a controversial bill designed to allow increased logging in national forests by refusing even to debate the measure.
The House, by a roll call vote of 228 to 150, rejected a resolution that would have brought the bill to the floor for two hours of debate before a final vote on the measure.
The bill, bitterly opposed by conservationists, would have earmarked all revenues from the sale of national forest timbers to pay for measures to increase the timber yield of the forests.
While it would be technically possible to bring the bill back for another try, the refusal even to reconsider it made this unlikely.
16 KANSAN Feb.27 1970
for continued pumping to relieve pressure from Union Oil's leaking well, Muskie said any needed pumping should "not be left to oil companies concerned primarily with profits."
Joining Muskie as cosponsors of the bill were Sens. Birch Bayh, D-Ind.; Thomas F. Eagleton, D-Mo.; Joseph M. Montoya, D-N.M., and Jennings Randolph, D-W.Va.
Oil slick forms after boat collision
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (UPI)—A towed barge slammed into a motor boat in the mouth of the St. Johns River late Thursday night, spilling an estimated 7,000 gallons of gummy "binker C" oil into the bay.
The crude oil, which stretched for miles and surrounded Blount Island near Danes Point, gushed through a three-foot hole in the hull of an Eastern Seaboard barge, which had a capacity of 20,000 gallons.
Coast Guardsmen scrambled to contain the slick, which bulged to 500 yards wide at one point, with spill booms and hoped an outgoing tide would keep the slick from ruining the shores of the St. Johns.
"This, too, is a problem easily resolved through a system of immediate identification of prisoners held by each side. Our side has notified the International Committee of the Red Cross of the names of prisoners we hold." Habib said.
Habib's remarks were relayed to newsmen in the form of a six-paragraph transcript. Before entering the session, Habib announced he had no prepared text "in the interests of seeking meaningful negotiations.
Before today's session Hanoi diplomats, for the first time, told a visiting American woman the fate of her missing husband-flyer. They told Mrs. John O'Grady of Las Vegas, Nev., that he was not in a prisoner of war camp.
The Hanoi negotiator ignored the matter of prisoners in the text of his remarks released to newsmen. He said the key to peace in Vietnam is in Washington. He said the Nixon administration is seeking to impose "American-style peace" in Southeast Asia.
The statement came from Nguyen Minh Vy, third ranking member of the North Vietnamese delegation, who charged that President Nixon's policies as outlined in his State of the Union message Jan. 18 will further deadlock the Paris conference.
Nixon asserted in his speech that Hanoi holds the key to a
Ninth inmate captured
WICHITA (UPI)—The ninth of 12 Sedgwick County Jail inmates who escaped in a mass break Sunday night was apprehended today.
Miller said he and Isiah C. Rhone Jr. fought but the two suffered only minor hurts before the prisoner was handcuffed.
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breakthrough in the Paris meeting. Vy disputed this and said an eight-point plan outlined by Nixon would continue the presence of American troops in Vietnam as an international gendarme.
Both Vy and the Viet Cong delegation denounced what they called further U.S. escalation of the war in Laos and said this was additional proof the United States aims to extend the war throughout the Indochinese Peninsula.
The Communist proposals for
total U.S. troop withdrawal and replacement of the Saigon administration are "flexible and generous."Vy said.
Saigon negotiator Pham Dang Lam accused the Communist side of blocking progress from the start with their "stubborn position, negative attitude and warlike acts." He called on them to drop their demands for U.S. withdrawal and overthrow of the Saigon government and said Hanoi still hopes to impose a Communist regime on the South.
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